Timothy Dolan and the System of Eternal Rewards

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the leading spokescritter for the Clan of The Red Beanie in its upcoming campaign to protect its delicate consciences against the onslaught of the unauthorized use of ladyparts, was previously posted to Milwaukee, where the archdiocese there is currently going through bankruptcy proceedings due to the amount of money it has had to pay out as a result of the Roman Catholic hierarchy's failed career as an international conspiracy to obstruct justice. The interesting thing about bankruptcy proceedings is that all kinds of documents get to be made public.

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It seems that the Milwaukee archdiocese made a series of under-the-prie-dieu payments to criminal priests in order to get them to leave the church quietly. It also seems that Dolan presided over this program of hush money. It also seems that, yes, Timothy Dolan, with his very evolved conscience and his predilection to lecture presidents on the sanctity of that evolved conscience, lied his pectoral cross off about the whole business....

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Questioned at the time about the news that one particularly notorious pedophile cleric had been given a "payoff" to leave the priesthood, Cardinal Dolan, then the archbishop, responded that such an inference was "false, preposterous and unjust."

Also, apparently, true.

Of course, Dolan was obviously following the advice in the Gospels to make sure that the Mystical Body Of Christ is on the hook for a criminal's annual checkup....

The first known payment in Milwaukee was to Franklyn Becker, a former priest with many victims. Cardinal Dolan said in response to a reporter's question at the time that the payment was "an act of charity," so that Mr. Becker could pay for health insurance. According to church documents, Mr. Becker was accused of abusing at least 10 minors, and given a diagnosis of pedophilia in 1983. The church paid more than $16 million to settle lawsuits involving him and one other priest.

Not long ago, Dolan was waxing wroth in the Wall Street Journal about how the president is making Catholics pay for aids to sexy sexytime that may not all be "open to the transmission of new life."

Coercing religious ministries and citizens to pay directly for actions that violate their teaching is an unprecedented incursion into freedom of conscience.

Yes, far better to take 20,000 of those dollar bills tossed into the basket of a Sunday morning and, without any substantive input from those Catholics whose consciences might object to this use of their donations, hand them over to a child-buggering monsterjust so the institutional Church can be rid of him.

We're going to hear more than we need to hear from this Dolan character between now and the election. Any story about him that does not contain the phrase "...who once supervised a program to use the money collected from parishioners to pay accused child molesters to leave the priesthood..." is unworthy of being read.